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POMONA >> Katie Cooper’s friend believes if Katie met Elliot Rodger before he killed her and five others before taking his own life last week, Cooper may have made Rodger think twice about carrying out his murder spree.

“She would have given this guy the time of day,” said Christina Anasis, a family friend of the Cooper family and graduate student at Cal Poly Pomona.

Anasis spoke to a group of 80 or so people who gathered on CPP’s campus Thursday evening to honor the six people killed and 13 injured during Rodger’s rampage near UC Santa Barbara on May 23.

In a 137-page manifesto, Rodger wrote that he would commit the mass murder, targeting attractive women, because he felt entitled to have sex with beautiful women who didn’t throw themselves at him, sparking a debate about misogyny and violence against women.

Mayra Lewis, coordinator of violence prevention and the women’s resource center at CPP, organized Thursday’s event and said our culture tends to normalize misogynistic behavior, using rap music as an example.

“It’s an isolated event with the murders, but it’s something that happens all the time,” she said.

Students who grabbed the open mic illustrated Lewis’ statement, sharing stories and poems of their own abuse-towards-women experiences.

Lindsay Dean, a third-year transfer student, said she’s experienced abuse, even while in class, and encouraged men to stand up for their female friends.

“If you tell one guy, ‘Hey, it’s not OK,’ ... you may have saved 10 more women,” she said after the event. “You may get laughed at, but we appreciate it.”

Along with the speeches, students wrote messages on a large sheet of paper that will be shipped to UCSB with words of encouragement, including “It’s OK to be a virgin — a man,” a reference to Rodger’s self-described sex status.

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Donations also were collected and will be used to memorialize the six UCSB students who were killed — Veronika Weiss, Christopher Michaels-Martinez, Cheng Yuan Hong, George Chen, Weihan Wang and Cooper.

“Just try to smile through the pain,” said a woman who went to high school with Cooper in Chino Hills. “Look on the bright side. Make a change.”